


Home is Wherever I'm with You

by erebones



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Implied Bagginshield, M/M, cameo appearances by galadriel and ori
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Books are funny things, Master Durin,” the bookseller says, one long-haired brow arching high into his forehead until the skin wrinkles like the folds of an accordion. “They can seem almost as if they really happened. Wouldn’t you agree?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home is Wherever I'm with You

Everything is different now. But that, oddly enough, isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that it’s the _same_ at the same time.

Filip sits and stares out the window at the water tracing infinite lines down the glass. The bookshop is a place he’s been many times since this entire thing began, to sit and think, or to read, or to get away from the craziness of his life once in a while. And he likes the proprietor. He’s a bit batty, perhaps, and his hair is always a veritable bird’s nest of tangles and stray puffs of hair, but he’s friendly and has a good heart. Somehow these traits seem even more important than they used to, before everything changed.

This old bookshop has become his place of refuge for just that reason. That, and it was here that he remembers waking up for the first time in this strange city, a book spread open on his chest and only the vaguest memories of who he was supposed to be.  

“Here we are, Mr. Durin!” says a thin, reedy old voice, and Filip turns to see the bookshop’s proprietor setting a steaming mug of tea in front of him. It’s something herbal – not precisely to Filip’s tastes, but he won’t turn down a cup of something hot on this clammy cold day – and a mellow amber color, like the thick yellow malt of a tankard of mead. He shakes off the prickle at the back of his neck and smiles, only slightly strained around the edges.

“Thanks, Mr. Brown. Just what I needed.” He takes the handle and toasts him with it as the wizened old fellow pats his shoulder.

“Looked like you needed a cuppa, dear boy. Sometimes a bit of something hot is just the thing.” He winks, making both shaggy eyebrows twitch, and Filip takes a drink. He nearly coughs it out again, but manages to swallow with some modicum of grace. It’s herbal all right, but not the kind he was expecting. It’s rich and full-bodied on his tongue, with licks of lemon and honey lingering in the aftertaste. As he swallows, it soothes the stiffness in his spine, and he can feel the beginnings of a headache fading back into the ether. He takes a bracing breath as Mr. Brown watches him with those protruding eyes. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Why of course not! Suppose I can take a few moments’ break.” He shuffles to the chair, pulling his ratty brown cardigan around his spare frame, and sits. One of his pet cats – Sebastian, Filip thinks, but he’s not completely sure – jumps up into his lap immediately, settling down with a contented purr. “What’s troubling you, my boy?”

Filip takes a bracing sip of the strange tea and sinks back further into his leather armchair. “I wanted to ask about that… book you recommended. The um, the hobbit one.”

“Ahhh yes!” Mr. Brown says, eyes nearly disappearing in the crinkling skin of his smile. “Mr. John Ronal Reuel Tolkien! Fine man! I studied with him at Oxford, you know, when I was wee laddie.”

“Oh – oh yes?” Filip’s head feels a bit light. “Is he still alive?”

“He’s dead now, sadly,” Mr. Brown says, his features melting into old sadness like watercolor ink. “Quite a few years back, I’m afraid. But he wrote a great deal in his lifetime. I believe I have multiple copies of everything he’s ever published, even some old personal notes I got my hands on. Wrote them to me in his will, dear chap.” He leans forward a little, earning a prickly sound from Sebastian. “Why d’you ask?”

“I just – I just wondered. It felt very personal, you see, the story.” _If by personal you mean it happened to me in another life,_ he thinks, with a hysterical inner giggle. But he doesn’t know the rules, here, whether or not it’s allowed, and so he pretends ignorance.

Mr. Brown’s eyes darken slightly, with some kind of inner wisdom Filip doesn’t think he can fully appreciate. Wizards are like that. “Well, yes, I imagine it would.”

Filip waits for something else – for some little anecdote or laughing remark that will make everything make sense again – but it doesn’t come. “Sir?”

“Books are funny things, Master Durin,” the bookseller says, one long-haired brow arching high into his forehead until the skin wrinkles like the folds of an accordion. “They can seem almost as if they really happened. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Filip sets down his tea on the coffee table between them with a trembling hand. “I would agree with that. Some books more than others. I would – I would like to read more, if you have any. Perhaps some history, if you have it.”

“History of Middle Earth?” Mr. Brown repeats. “Well it’s all history, if you want to look at it like that.” He shoos Sebastian off his lap and stands with some effort. “Let me find you the Trilogy. You may find that quite interesting. And don’t!” He holds up one finger, stopping Filip short halfway out of his chair. “Do not skip the appendices!”

*

Filip doesn’t skip them. In fact, he pores over them and takes notes, reading late into the night by the yellow glow of his kitchen light. It makes his job at the docks a little more dangerous (one should never operate heavy machinery on little sleep, especially when one has only a queer kind of muscle memory for the proper handling of said machinery), but he begs some of Mr. Brown’s hand-blended tea off him, and he works quicker and sleeps deeper than he has before. He’s not completely sure what’s in it, but he thinks he’s better off not knowing.

When he’s finished The Lord of the Rings, he moves on to The Silmarillion and The Lost Tales, scouring for clues on how this strange new reality has come to be. But he doesn’t know enough about Tolkien’s life or habits, and Mr. Brown is very sensitive, becoming easily distressed at the constant mention of his old professor. Gradually he comes to realize that if he wishes to learn the truth, he’s going to need help. And there’s only one place to go for that.

*

There is a name in his address book, the only one he recognizes. The others are shadows in his memory, names without faces that his human self can barely recall. And his other self – his dwarf self, though he barely lets himself think of it in the light of day – does not recognize them at all, cannot even read the language they were written in, although a part of him knows that they were written in his own hand. At the back of the book under ‘O’ is _Thomas_ _Oak_ , scribbled in thick blue ink with an address underneath it that Filip can barely read. Part of him, the dwarf part, does not understand why his uncle isn’t written down under ‘Durin.’ The human half knows, in a vague, unfinished sort of way, that Uncle Thom separated himself from the rest of the family and hasn’t spoken to his nephew in years.

He flips through the address book several times, searching for other names, but there are none. Not even the one he wishes most to see: that of his brother. The name would be different, he knows, like his own, but he can find no trace of him. The ‘D’section is completely blank.

Filip realizes, sitting at his kitchen table in the pale light of morning, that he has found something worse than this whole business after all: he does not know where his brother is.

*

The wind whistles sharp around his ears as Filip raps three times on the dark green door and steps back, hunching his shoulders. It’s bloody cold in London, and he’s not really dressed for it. He was too eager to catch a train and track down his uncle.

There is an interminable wait before the door cracks open. Filip straightens his shoulders and hopes he doesn’t look too disreputable. He hasn’t thought to shave in almost a week, giving his jaw a hearty growth of blond hair.

The man at the door is both familiar and totally alien. He is taller than Filip remembers – but then, so is Filip – and his hair is short and dark without trace of silver, cropped close against his skull. His nose is still strong and straight with a hook at the very end, and his beard is black and full around his thin mouth, but the strongest similarity Filip can see is Thom’s – Thorin’s – eyes. They are pale blue and piercing, staring out at him from under dark brows.

“Uncle,” Filip chokes out before he can stop himself, and Thom steps out into the winter cold to pull him into an embrace.

“Fíli,” he whispers, voice rough with suppressed emotion. It’s just the same as he remembers it, if a little higher off the ground, and a sob escapes Filip’s chest before he can stop it. “Inside,” Thorin tells him, tugging him through the door and out of the wind.

*

“I don’t understand it either,” is the first thing Thorin tells him, which is hardly comforting. “Nor does anyone else.” And that is another matter entirely.

“Anyone else?” Fíli repeats, staring at him over his cup of coffee.

“Well, yes. Several of the others have been… in contact.”

 _Bilbo?_ Fíli wonders. _Dwalin, Balin, Bofur?_ But aloud he can only say, “Kíli?”

“Kalle,” Thorin corrects with a slight smile. “He’s making a bit of a name for himself, it seems. In theatre.”

“In _theatre_?” Fíli repeats, and shakes it off, because his human brother’s choice of career is hardly of concern right now. “Where is he?”

Thorin flicks out his mobile – something fancy, Fíli knows, but that’s about all he can recognize – and fiddles with it. It occurs to him that his brother and his uncle have adapted to this new life much better than he has. “Rehearsal. He should be getting out in half an hour or so.” He stands, smoothing the creases from his fine black trousers. “Shall we meet him?”

“You’re… well off,” Fíli says, in a bit of a daze.

“Hmm? Oh, well, only a little. My husband makes quite a pretty penny as a writer.”

“Your what?” Fíli wheezes, and his uncle claps him on the shoulder.

“We’ll talk about that later. Come on. Let’s catch a cab.”

*

Fíli feels like he’s constantly one step behind, his human memories filtering in a few moments too late with every new turn. He spends the cab ride wishing for some of Mr. Brown’s herbal tea, or maybe a smoke. Not one of those nasty, sparse, cement-flavored white sticks – cigarettes – his human self keeps in the second drawer past the sink, but a decent pipe, with some honest-to-Durin pipeweed.

He sticks close to Thorin as they leave the cab and walk into a modest theatre from the back, wandering through the labyrinthine hallways. It isn’t terribly busy – it’s rehearsal, not a show – but everyone they pass nods to Thorin with the deferential quality of soldiers saluting someone else’s commanding officer. _Agent_ , Fíli’s mind supplies. _Kíli’s agent?_

His thoughts are stopped in their tracks as Thorin tugs him backstage, dark and muffled from the world between giant hanging curtains. On stage, the lights are bright and blinding, and two young men stand in the middle of it, scripts in hand and prop swords at their sides. They seem to be discussing some kind of difficult passage with an older woman standing in the orchestra pit. Her fair hair gleams in the lights, and her mellow voice carries well as the two young men attempt to argue back and forth.

Any other details are lost as Fíli examines the men’s faces. One is tall and gangly, with a too-big nose and an awkward feel for the prop weapon in his hand. Fíli’s gaze passes right over him to the other: not quite as tall, but broader, with curly dark hair and the shadow of a few days’ worth of stubble. His heart lurches sideways in his chest, and before he can think twice, he’s walking out onto the stage.

The women – the director? – stops speaking immediately, and the two men turn toward him.

“Excuse me, this is a rehearsal,” the director tells him, obviously irked. “You’re not supposed to be –”

“He’s with me,” Thorin says, stepping out behind him. His voice is low and muffled in Fíli’s ears. He can barely hear anything, see anything, besides the dear face in front of him.

A rough clatter of wood on wood distracts him, and he watches as Kalle’s prop sword shivers against the ground. Then there are footsteps, a rasp of breath in his ear, and Kíli’s arms are tight around his waist.

“Brother,” Fíli chokes. He returns the embrace, hard enough to lift his slighter brother off the floor. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Kíli just holds him tighter. And for the first time since this whole mess began, Fíli thinks that maybe he’ll find his way home again after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is all for now, but I might play around in this 'verse later. I kind of ripped Filip and Kalle's name from littleblackdog's modern AU, but only because they're the best fit and they are Scandinavian name and therefore pretty darn close to canon. Inspired by this gifset on tumblr: http://capnhal.tumblr.com/post/39824221109


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